CEO and NEO Pay: Effects of Executive Pay Levels on Say on Pay

CEO pay gets most of the attention for the Say on Pay vote. It’s less clear how shareholders interpret and evaluate pay levels for the other named executive officers excluding the CEO (“NEOs”) and to what degree these values impact Say on Pay outcomes.

We look at S&P 500 Say on Pay results from the past three years to understand how NEO compensation influences Say on Pay voting, and discuss our four key observations.